TOTW: The Old Gods and the New

Spirituality, the gift that keeps on giving. A topic that has a thousand questions and often no answers.

It's often said that "our" society is a hollow one, "a carcass of a worm, a monstrous cadaver" that leaves its inhabitants feeling just as dead and empty. Much of what gets called radicalism seems to be an attempt, in more or less reactionary ways, to fill this void with meaning.

Much like with organized religion radicalism gives you a congregation (group of people who probably dislike each other but agree to meet once a week), good works and foundational texts, and while that all may be fine it leaves me wondering if we could go further.

What would your ideal Anarchist spirituality be? Has it existed in the past? Are you practicing it now? Does it come from a cultural legacy you share, or is something new? How can we work towards an anti-social spirituality?

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pass

haha, jk. imagine if that was the whole comment.

my attempts for "spirituality" have been like banging my head against a wall.

there's just nothing there for me. maybe there is a god or gods or spirits, they just don't wanna have anything to do with me.
maybe i'm color blind to them and it's an impairment. or maybe it's just bullshit that's there if you can will it to be.

Was completely different. I was given my first mystical experience (a term I don't particularly care for) on all of 2 grams dry Psilocybe cubensis, in the rain in the backwoods. This was only my 2nd time at this dose; I was age 25 at the time. An entire body of experience was to follow. I'm not sure what makes the difference here.

I was NOT some Evolved Being destined to receive Samadhi at a young age. I was easily in the most damaged 15% of the population. Nearly constant major depression during age 16 thru 22, much of which manifested as hate rather than obvious depression, from which I got permanent brain damage (hypocamus- I tested 2, 4, and 7 percentile on working memory; I first noticed this at age 18). To use the Doctor Words, I had a borderline "personality" (character) disorder with an attachment disorder underneath it. NOT an apparently promising candidate for what quickly became high-dose work with LSD.

And the new left (what we call "the '60s") was ALL a CIA Plot!

Actually could have been a Neonazi plot. Germanophilia... Volkswagen cult... Exploding markets of LSD (a product of Nazi scientists)... Long-haired Aryan hippies... first major instance of antizionism... progressive national-socialism... Anti-Americanism... The new aesthetics weren't anywhere close to that of the NSDAP, yet all the rest was there.

This is true.

perlman suggests that some medieval heretical christian sects (e.g beguines) had anarchistic tendencies in against his-story. they rebelled against church and society through a primitivist impulse (a move away from complexity and abstraction). vaneigem has a book in the same vein, the movement of the free spirit, which i havent read.

if theres going to be any kind of anarchist spirituality i think it will be a mutation of something that already exists. aaragorn! had an essay about making your own indigenous animism by squatting next to a river and making up a new grunt language, which is a nice thought, but i think the desire for a tabula rasa on which to build something completely new is utopian. i cant see myself becoming any kind of christian either.

like le way, i think there are parts of buddhism that have potential

zen buddhism itself is like a buddhism/daoism hybrid strain. anarchobuddhism is possible. we should infiltrate zen temples

i dont really know anything about zen yet. im gonna read some books. i imagined it would be better to learn from irl people though, hence the temple. howd you start surfin this zen continuum? did you just read books?

i would have not come up with neither spirituality or science (nor language) by myself. it would have been a much more enjoyable silence in my head, and more taking my surroundings and moving through them and resting.

my spirituality will be oblivion

Let go and let go

If one says fire is light,
Do not respond, shake your head.
Only a thief recognizes a thief,
At one question he immediately nods.

the modern civilized subject has been anally castrated. the only path is to penetrate the decadent phallus.

sounding.

Do you know anal retentive, which is slang for obsessive compulsive disorder. Sooo, anal castration means being free of obsessive compulsive drives. It other words, laid back, relaxed, easy going.

You put "laid back, relaxed" in the same typology as "easygoing". Not exactly the same realm... If I'm laid back then that means I don't necessarily wanna deal with others' high-energy tempers, and I deal with who I feel like dealing with. As anything more would easily become a stressful effort.

Laid back means to be a loner...Living for your own comfort, not that of others (becoz YOLOLOL). That, unless you got some special traits/smell that attracts other dogs and make them like you by default.

wow, that gets to stay but the humorous bootyism comments get censored.

Pathetic

Booty is sexist white male racist talk simple reason, butt is gender and race neutral and romantic, so put up or shut up!

i didn't realize this site was for idpols and the language police. stupid me.

booty is sexist white male....? now i realize what people mean when they say these progressive sjws live on social media rather than irl.

no worries, i'm gone.

You cannot learn zen by reading nor by listening to others, nor by not doing either of those. But you can start anywhere.

Lol.

Anyway, I was recently reminded of this essay by Alan Watts http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Miscellaneous/Beat_Zen_Square_Zen.html

He says "
But the Westerner who is attracted by Zen and who would understand it deeply must have one indispensable qualification: he must understand his own culture so thoroughly that he is no longer swayed by its premises unconsciously."

And I would say that last bit is the place to start, just as he says. Learn about your given spirituality so that you understand the whys and hows and wherefores of it before (or alongside) learning from a different culture.

The rest of that essay and much of Alan Watts' writing is terrific.

Zen is another religion. Its another " The " ism except its spelt Zen. Its Zenism, no different to Heidebgerism's "Dasein". Its just another inversion on any culturism with and "ism" added to it.
Just do the opposite of what the status quo do and believe and you have Zen.
Le Way was right, it should be spelt zen and its nothing more than projection.

I've been following this thread, and its all over the place. For a start, Leway has been deleted as usual, what's new? And he was agreeing with Alan Watts view, so anon 18:07, Leway didn't call zen a religion, but you're contradicting his view, and he described the spirituality as a self-consciousness as a vector towards connecting sources of creaþive energy, that's NOT RELIGION, that's social energy!

Not on topic, but it irks me no end to read otherwise smart people use the term reactionary when they actually mean to say reactive. A reactionary is not a person who reacts, but is someone who’s interested in a prior political arrangement (usually an imagined past filled with hierarchical glory). It’s the opposite of progressive.

progressive isn't the opposite of reactionary by any means. "progressive" is a term for statist liberals / the reform wing of the democratic party.

Since when does a bunch of yuppie cool kids recivilizing the forest in the name of some neopagan "rewilding"? Oh wait...

Margaret Killjoy fuck off, btw. Only camp fire that deserves a celebration is that of your picture-perfect shack along with your picture-perfect band members set @flame.

signs are:
-for roads (so civ)
-for advertising (so market)
-for language (ugh, so civ)
-for gangs (that's so..ugh..not iconoclastic, why are you labeling yourself with a sign?)
-for contracts and autographs (wow, you sell-out)

Opposite of truth like politicians. Same type of people wrote these books. Iraqi god of old testament too obvious is an underworld god annoyed when his slaves learned things & wore clothes & Jesus encourages large social inequality & evil power they say Serpent is, but if they say God is good when clearly evil & they say the Serpent is evil then we know the Serpent is good & in order to do different to them & be called evil by them the Serpent must then be an anarchist & we know from archaeology that he was around before the 4,000 BC god of the old testament when it became hierarchical.

I am currently involved in an anarchist spiritual current, The Moorish Orthodox Church. I also wanted to mention Discordianism. Above commenters mentioned Zen. Discordian co-founder Kerry Thornley wrote a book about an anarchist take on zen, Zenarchy (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kerry-thornley-zenarchy). Camden Benares wrote Zen Without Zen Masters, out of print but on archive.org. Enemy Combatant recently published Tsuji Jun: Japanese Dadaist, Anarchist, Philosopher, Monk by Erana Jae Taylor. Jun attempted to combine Nietzsche, Stirner, and Zen. If you are into zines there are several spiritual anarchist zines current. The Moorish Science Monitor and The Mysterious Rose Garden of the Moorish Orthodox Church, are both MOC zines. Babylon Begone is about very weird anarchist Christianity (ie not your momma's anarcho-pacsifism or Catholic worker stuff).
Peter Lamborn Wilson has a lot of great stuff. Spiritual Anarchism: Topics for Research (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-lamborn-wilson-spiritual-a...), for instance. Also several books about Islam.
etc.

Don't forget Max Cafard's Zen Anarchy (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-cafard-zen-anarchy) and Peter Lamborn Wilson's CALIBAN'S MASQUE . Spiritual Anarchy &. The Wild Man in Colonial America, which is in Gone To Croatan (Autonomedia, 1993).
Someone above mentioned Vaneigem's The Movement of the Free Spirit (Zone Books, 1998), which is excellent. He also wrote The Resistance to Christianity. The Heresies at the Origins of the 18th Century, which has never been released as a book in English but is fortunately here (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/raoul-vaneigem-the-resistance-to...). Reading texts is not the same as practicing an anarchist spirituality but it certainly gives you a flavor of what people have done in the past, what is possible.

to me is an ever changing game, for me i have really strong realizations and those effect how i look at my life forever. This doesn't protect me from feeling shitty and depressed as much as i would like it too sometimes, but it does help me make better decisions and gives me a line of defense against the self-hatred of my own thoughts that comes up from time to time.

"How can we work towards an anti-social spirituality?"

is this another attempt to be different from other people and stand out? Sounds like something written by a brand new LBC intern. You realize that the internet may be anti-social, but it is constructed and used by people? I guess this terminology is also possibly just a rejection of generalized pro-social attitudes that people will mindlessly command you to adopt, "thinking positive" and what not. Hyperactive stupidity is one of the greatest anti-social/social methods of late capitalism. Hatred is a dish best served cold IMO, kill them, ignore them, lol. I'm logging off so i don't get too overwhelmed by my own anger!

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